


Ghost

by aroray



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroray/pseuds/aroray
Summary: The first time Connor sees Cole is what would have been his tenth birthday.





	Ghost

The first time Connor sees Cole is what would have been his tenth birthday.

The park is well-maintained, visited frequently, and the lamps remain lit and bright throughout the night until dawn. There’s one right by the bench where they sit, a steady beacon. It is comforting. Connor reads the label on the bottle Hank holds over and over, not necessarily needing the light or to read it again once he has read it already, but doing it anyway. It feels like something to do. It feels like if he reads it enough times, maybe Hank will absorb the lurch of uneasiness in Connor’s stomach and stop drinking.

Obviously, Hank does not do this. He continues to drink. 

After Connor has read the label for the 379th time and before beginning the 380th, something changes. He does a brief self-check, comes up clean, looks around. The park is empty. Hank is the same as he was, very drunk and very sad. The words on the bottle are the same. The lamp is lit. There is a child sitting at Hank’s feet.

Ah. There is a child sitting at Hank’s feet.

Connor attempts a scan. The child refuses to be scanned. He relies on context clues instead.

The child is just over the average size of a six year old. Their face is bottomless and dark. Their outline is clear and crisp, but in the manner of a paper cutout. Everything is smoke. After a brief search and some sample comparison, Connor comes to the conclusion that he has been hacked. He runs his self-diagnostic. It comes up empty. Maybe the child is there.

They turn their head to look at him.

“Hello,” he says.

The child’s form glitches violently. Despite his not being able to see it, Connor experiences a firm sense that the child is sticking their tongue out at him.

“Wha’?” says Hank.

The child disappears.

Connor blinks. He runs another diagnostic. This one also comes up empty. Hank is squinting at him, like he finds Connor unpleasantly blurry. There’s no indication that he noticed the form at his feet, if he could see it at all.

“Nothing, Lieutenant,” Connor says. “I saw a lightning bug, but it’s gone now. Would you like to go home?”

Hank does not want to go home. He expresses a desire to throw himself off the nearby bridge instead. Connor makes a polite request to the contrary and while Hank does not agree, neither does he attempt the action. Connor then suggests they leave a second time and Hank acquiesces.

As they go, Hank stumbling, Connor glances over his shoulder.

There is nothing there.

Over the next two weeks, Connor thinks about it very little. He’s busy, and experiences no further visual uncertainties, so there’s no call for it. When he does think about it, whether absently during the day or seemingly tugged towards it at night, he’s uncomfortable. The nature of what he saw skews towards the supernatural, and the obvious conclusion is influenced by the knowledge of why Hank was there and what he was drinking for. It makes Connor unhappy to think he may have seen the ghost of Hank’s son. He would prefer not to have. It would be easier if he had not seen anything.

The next time, he’s in Hank’s home. It is the anniversary of his death.

Hank is, again, extremely intoxicated. He sits on the couch, blindly staring, and Connor witnesses the appearance. Cole flickers uncertainly, the darkness of his body unaffected by the television behind him or the kitchen light in front. He is directly in front of Hank, standing barely two feet from him, legs clipping through the coffee table.

Connor waits for Hank to comment. No comment comes. If Cole is there, only Connor is seeing him.

It makes some sense. Connor has done his research, talked to other androids who have seen similar things. They are, at the bottom of it all, electronics, and the unearthly has a distinct history with cameras.

Now that he has more context, the apparition is easier to place as Hank’s son, even as only a shadow, even with no facial features. He recognizes the distinct outline of his hair, a little longer than in the photo but still sticking up at the crown of his head, the large ears. With Cole standing, Connor can pin his height at 3’11”, above average for his age. He must have taken after Hank in that way- Connor knows Hank’s ex-wife was not tall. He wishes he could have seen Cole when he was alive. It isn’t for the first time.

He watches Cole watch Hank drink. Even with the high quality of his optics, it’s difficult to suss out Cole’s hand at his side, hard to see it twitch and clench. It’s a familiar motion. Hank does the same thing when he wants to speak but knows he shouldn’t.

They exist together in silence until Hank passes out, and after. 

“I’m sorry you died,” Connor says, because he is.

Cole vanishes.

Over the course of the next year, Connor sees Cole 27 times.

He doesn’t tell Hank. How could he? It would be cruel. Even he knows that, with his penchant for bluntness and social stumbles. Knows it could kill Hank just as easy as any weapon. He can only watch. 

Connor doesn’t have that instinctive bone-deep human fear of the dead that humans do- not even the awkward uneasiness and disgust most other androids developed as they deviated. He was designed to handle death. To cause it. He deals with it every day. He can’t bring himself to be scared of Cole, or even uncomfortable with his presence. Cole is Hank’s son- was Hank’s son- will always be Hank’s son. 

Cole doesn’t seem angry or disruptive, not upset, only there. If Hank is drunk or asleep enough, Connor will say hello. Cole never responds. Frequently gives Connor the sense that he’s pulling a face or sulkily turning away. Connor knows he wants something, but doesn’t know what. It’s nothing like a horror movie but everything like a horror movie.

A pattern emerges. Cole appears most frequently when Hank is remembering him, and therefore when Hank is drinking himself to death. Connor wonders, sometimes, whether the ghost is Cole himself or if Hank’s grief is simply so powerful it follows him around in the shape of what he grieves.

As the year progresses, he sees Cole break the pattern twice.

Once, in the kitchen, cooking rice, he turns to watch Hank throw his head back and laugh, and at the edge of his vision, just outside the circle the kitchen’s buzzing overhead casts, so does Cole.

Connor looks. Cole looks. Hank is, in that moment, the sun around which they rotate. Connor suspects this will always be the case.

The second, he is alone, and it is late at night.

Cole sits on the floor and Connor watches him reach out and touch Sumo’s head. For a moment, Connor is unaccountably afraid- but nothing happens. Sumo sleeps on, side rising and falling in heavy, huffing breaths. He has an irrational sense that Cole is disappointed.

When Connor crouches down next to him, Cole stiffens visibly. Connor reaches out and puts his hand over Cole’s, strokes his fingertips through the soft fur of the old dog’s forehead.

In his sleep, Sumo’s tail wags faintly.

As Connor glances over, Cole glitches out of sight.

The twenty-fifth time, Hank between them on the couch, deeply unconscious, Connor says “How are you, Cole?” 

He watches the outline of the child flicker, then solidify, then turn towards him. The blank face is curious, if wary. He smiles, perfect and courteous. Cole says something, but Connor doesn’t know what. He knows Cole is speaking, he knows the sound of it is audible, he knows he processes a frequency of sound and that they are words in English, but he can’t understand.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” he says. “What was that?”

Cole disappears. Hank stirs, making a sound akin to a dog thinking about throwing up, and Connor forgets about it for the moment. Later, he goes over the audio, but in the moment what seemed so clear if strangely incomprehensible is nothing but garbled static and syllables. He comes away with the impression of Cole’s voice, high and clear. 

It reminds him of Hank.

On Cole’s eleventh birthday, Hank doesn’t drink until late at night, lets Connor convince him to go out. It’s significant progress. Cole follows them throughout the day, in glimpses. Connor sees him at the park, in the street, staring at intersections and at Hank and at Sumo. Sometimes he’s close enough to touch, and sometimes he’s across the way, parted from them, seeming to truly experience every inch of the distance. He leaves when Hank starts drinking and doesn’t come back. 

Connor isn’t sure if that’s good or bad or means nothing at all, if Cole is just tired, if Hank’s grief has exhausted itself- but even as he thinks it, Connor refutes himself. Hank’s grief is endless. It’s only that Hank will, on occasion, let it shift slightly to the side, to be less than his entirety. He hopes that Cole isn’t hurt by it. He knows children can come to conclusions that aren’t true about the way their parents feel.

He doesn’t see Cole again for the next two weeks, not until the anniversary of his death. Cole doesn’t show up until after Hank has already passed out. It makes Connor come back to his theory that Cole only has so much energy to expend.

“Hello, Cole,” he says.

Cole, sitting curled up around his knees between Connor and Hank on the bed, turns his head minutely, as if peering at Connor out of the corner of his eye. He says something incomprehensible.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

Still beyond meaning.

“One more time?”

This time, Cole turns to him fully, and Connor experiences a rush of displaced static.

“I want my daddy,” Cole says.

Connor tries to touch the smoky outline of Cole’s shoulder. There is no sensation. He curls his hand around the shape of it, keeps his fingers carefully outside of the line delineating Cole from not Cole.

“I’m sorry,” he replies. There’s nothing else to say. He is sorry. He’s sorry that Cole died so very young, that the world is unfair, that Cole is here and not somewhere better, that his death reduced Hank to this, that he never got to meet Cole while he was alive.

“Sorry doesn’t fix me,” says Cole. 

“You’re right,” says Connor.

They sit in silence, watching Hank. He’s animated in his sleep, even what should be the dead sleep of a passed out drunk, fidgeting and snuffling. Cole’s hand passes through his, immaterial.

“I want my daddy,” Cole says again, but this time in the dangerous, crumbling voice of a child about to cry, and there’s nothing Connor can do, and he’s gone again and Connor is sitting alone in the dark, his own hand hovering above nothing. 

All he can do is reach out and press his fingertips into Hank’s palm, touching Cole’s father for him like he touched Sumo, and hope it comes across right.

The next time he sees Cole, he doesn’t want to. He wants so badly not to. 

Hank has been shot.

It’s his fault. How could it not be his fault? He’s an android. He’s smarter, faster, disposable, and he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t fast enough, and now Hank is bleeding. Hank is bleeding too much. Connor is putting pressure on the wound, desperate pressure, possibly too much, and when he looks up to check for the fifth time in a minute if the paramedics are here he sees Cole.

“No,” he says, because if Cole is here-

Cole stares down at Hank, entire form trembling, and doesn’t reply.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, because he is, because he should be sorry, because he’s going to do his damnedest to keep this child’s father from him. Says “I’m sorry, I know you want your dad, but I can’t let you have him yet-”

“Daddy?” Cole says, and he sounds like a frightened child. He is a frightened child. “Dad? Daddy?”

Hank’s face twists, a pained grunt barely making its way out of his throat, and his eyes open. They find Connor first, pause, dart to the side- and he sees Cole. He sees Cole.

“No,” Connor says, because the link is obvious. “Not yet. Please. I need him. He can’t- he can’t go with you yet, I need him-” and cuts off as Hank stirs beneath his hands, presses down harder, feels ribs creak beneath the heels of his palms.

“Cole,” Hank murmurs, hoarse and wondering. He raises a shaking hand. Connor is terrified to see them make contact, everything in him screaming nowrongno to see Hank’s corporeal palm cup Cole’s noncorporeal face and stop as if Cole were really there. 

“Please,” he says, voice soft and mechanical. Hank doesn’t hear him.

Cole clings to his father’s hand, falls in that abrupt little-kid way to his knees, hugs Hank’s arm to his chest. Connor is, for the first time, scared of him. Terrified of him. Understands the deep, existential fear he represents, the horror of death touching that which you love and want to keep.

“Cole,” Hank whispers. “Cole, honey. Don’t cry, honey, it’s alright. I’m gonna be fine.”

“Daddy,” Cole sobs out, a scratched record, and Connor is shocked to feel Hank’s other hand curl around his where they’re pressed into him, briefly afraid that Hank will try and pull him away- but his palm goes flat, holding Connor’s down.

“I’ll be okay,” Hank whispers, and Cole dissolves into the flashing ambulance lights.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this: http://piggyhoho.tumblr.com/post/178847399176


End file.
